“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
―Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Greeted this morning with the story in the NYT and other outlets about another Justice Alito flag indiscretion, this time at his beach house on Long Island.
For those not read into pseudo-Christian White Nationalist symbology, the Appeal to Heaven flag traces its roots back to the Revolutionary War, but was largely forgotten until recent years when it was co-opted by a particularly rank cluster of the far right who display it as a call for armed insurrection against an oppressive government. It was quite popular on the grounds of the Capitol on January 6th.
And a Supreme Court justice who is currently hearing cases related to the prosecution and conviction of those insurrectionists apparently flies this flag at his beach house as a matter of routine.
Of course, he's been caught doing this before. A few days ago the Times ran a story about how he flew an upside down American flag, another insurrectionist icon, in front of his Alexandria home shortly after the attempted autogolpe following the 2020 election.
He blamed that episode on his wife, saying it had something to do with a dustup between her and their liberal neighbors. If this were a trial over the issue of whether he was personally involved in the display, the Appeal to Heaven banner would certainly be admissible to show that he was lying. Guilty as charged.
Setting aside the odd timing of these revelations, the latter over three years after the fact, what seems most troubling here is that someone so intelligent, with enough political savvy to jockey his way into a lifetime gig in one of the most powerful positions in the world, thought this behavior was acceptable, or worse yet even a duty. I have known a lot of judges in my life, some better than others, and every one of them I can recall made it a priority to uphold standards of behavior that would advance the rule of law by fostering public confidence in the legal system. This does just the opposite, and feeds the narrative that the courts, and in particular the Supreme Court, are places subject to the caprice of partisan hacks.
I really hate that, being a member of the SCOTUS bar myself.
Returning to the question of why Alito would hang an insurrectionist banner in front of his homes, twice, while hearing cases directly related to the issues those flags reflect, there are in fact a few data points out there to help us along this morning. I know it may seem unrelated, but half of all Americans believe the stock market is down for the year, although it's at a record high and up 12% since January.
And America's whackiest congressperson, MJT, has taken some fairly routine language in the FBI search warrant in the classified documents case and spun the yarn that it shows Biden ordered law enforcement to kill Trump.
All this misinformation and downright prevarication echo around the lacunae of the right wing media, which no longer lives on AM radio, but instead can be found in several highly rated podcasts you can find on Spotify. The fact that the false narrative about the stock market is believed by nearly half of all polled gives on a sense of the reach of these outlets. And the hosts of these shows no longer have any need to temper their message, because their advertisers are all part of the same bullshit factory. Apparently you can buy right wing coffee ("awake but not woke"), emergency medical kits and C-rations for the coming civil war, and "patriot" cell phone service from a company that promises it's part of the whack job reactionary biosphere.
This is why Trump may well become the next president--your neighbors, your elected officials, your media influencers, apparently even your Supreme Court justices all exist in a mediascape you and I can't understand because we're not there. I used to think these fringe sources of misinformation were populated and visited by a few fringe types, but apparently it's all around us. I also don't watch porn on my computer, but it seems a large swath of those around me, almost all men I suppose, spend enough time there that OnlyFans has made lots of naked women quite wealthy. My guess is that it's much the same with the right wing media--just because I'm not there doesn't mean that others, in the privacy of their own homes, or maybe sitting in chambers in the nation's highest court, aren't listening to that podcast about how lime disease is a government weapon to wipe out poor whites (not making that one up) or Joe Biden's using DOJ resources in attempting to murder Trump.
[as an aside, if that last story were true, Trump's own lawyers would argue, and did in fact argue in the SCOTUS a few weeks ago, that Biden would be immune from prosecution. Ironies abound].
We're a fractured country, atomized and living in our own separate realities. No need for VR goggles when you have Breitbart. None of this bodes well for democracy.
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